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A Reporter On The Panama Papers: The Basic Idea Is ‘To Hide True Ownership’

This is FRESH AIR. I’m Dave Davies in for Terry Gross. Last month, media organizations around the world published stories detailing billions of dollars of assets hidden in obscure shell companies, some of it held by prominent political figures and their associates. The revelations forced the resignation of Iceland’s prime minister and revealed the holdings of many of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s friends. The source of the stories was a leak of internal documents from a Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca, which specializes in creating shell companies and trusts.

The leak of more than 11 million records is the largest in the history of journalism. The material was analyzed for a year by more than 370 journalists from over 40 countries who worked collaboratively and secretly and